Non-commercial FAQs.

Nuke Non-commercial and Mari Non-commercial are free, non-watermarked but functionally restricted versions of the Nuke and Mari software products respectively, available for download and use by anyone who wants to learn and experiment with the products at their own pace, while not using them for commercial work.

We are considering our plans for non-commercial versions of each product individually. We are working on solutions to remove barriers and make it easier for you to learn all our software products, so we encourage you to keep an eye on us for any updates.

“Non-commercial” use is any usage that does not enable the user to profit and is not connected with or forms part of the provision of services to third-parties. Examples of non-commercial usage are personal learning, personal projects, experimentation and research. Activities that indirectly generate advertising revenue—such as clips or free tutorials posted on YouTube or Vimeo—are permitted; however, the creation of content (such as tutorials) that a viewer must pay to access is not.

You can’t use a non-commercial product while actually working, whether you’re working at a commercial premises or at home. To help clarify, here are some examples of the kind of use that is not permitted:

• Use while doing commercial work, either at home or in a company
• Use for the provision of services to third parties, whether paid or not
• Use in the same pipeline as commercial versions of the software
• Use in clusters of non-commercial licenses
• Instructional use, or use in a classroom or lab
• Use to create content where a fee is charged to access that content
• Use to create promotional, pitch or pilot content in order to gain commercial work

Individual artists, students and graduates can use non-commercial licenses to create content for their personal demo reels to showcase their expertise. Companies, including professional freelancers, cannot use non-commercial products to promote services that would require them to have commercial licenses. Non-commercial software cannot be used to create content for project pitches, pilots or business promotional materials to gain commercial work. 

You can post videos made with non-commercial software online, provided you do not charge for access to them. Indirect advertising revenue generated from such posting is permitted.

No. Not-for-profit organizations are not eligible to use non-commercial licenses. Use by not-for-profit-registered individuals and companies is classified as commercial use as it provides a service and is not personal use for learning, experimentation or research.

No. It is not possible to use non-commercial software products for this purpose. However, we issue developer licenses to cover this situation. Contact info@foundry.co.uk to discuss your requirements.

Non-commercial software products cannot be used by educational institutions or professional instructors to teach. Educational institutions or instructors teaching Foundry software products are classified as commercial businesses and are eligible for our education pricing and licensing program.

Yes, as long as it is for personal learning purposes. You cannot use these licenses to teach.

Non-commercial software products cannot be used for instruction or installation in a classroom or lab, or by students whilst they are receiving instruction. It is for home learning only.

Non-commercial licenses cannot be used by professional instructors or companies creating learning content, where a fee is charged to access such content. However, individuals who are not professional teachers or instructors can use a non-commercial license to create online materials for distribution on YouTube or Vimeo at no charge (as an example of their experience or to help others), even where these activities may indirectly generate advertising revenue.

Non-commercial licenses can be used to create entries to recreational competitions that offer prizes, as long as these do not include those offering the chance of future commercial development as the prize. Non-commercial products cannot be used for festivals where there is any revenue gained from the submission or where attendees must pay to view the content, even if the project and festival are not for profit. Festival entries that are created to gain future commissions or as pilots to sell into distribution cannot be made using non-commercial licenses.

Non-commercial licenses can be used with other commercial products (e.g. Mari Non-commercial with commercial Modo) for non-commercial projects and learning. The entire project must be non-commercial and may not violate any other usage restrictions for non-commercial licenses. Non-commercial licenses cannot be used in a pipeline with the commercial versions of the same product (e.g. Nuke Non-commercial and commercial Nuke cannot be used on the same project). 

You can see our Foundry’s EULA here.

Our educational offering gives students, teaching staff, graduates and institutions access to heavily discounted, full commercial licences of the Production COLLECTIVE, which includes NUKE STUDIO, MODO and MARI. These licenses have the following benefits to eligible customers:

• No functional restrictions or limitations: full Python and third-party plug-in support 
• Large discounts on commercial licenses for the duration of the course 
• Heavily discounted upgrade paths to full commercial products upon graduation (relevant to student and graduate licenses only)

For full details of our educational offering, visit our Education page.

Contact sales@foundry.com and we’ll talk you through the best options for getting your hands on the right versions of our commercial software products for your needs.

Non-commercial licenses will be available as node-locked licenses only, granted on a rolling 30-day free subscription basis.

This license works on a free subscription to maximise access to your non-commercial license. On first run, sign up using your Foundry log-in details, then every day you start the software, we'll renew the license for the next 30 days (assuming you're connected to the Internet). This means you'll always be able to use our non-commercial software products for 30 days from your last Internet-connected session.

Licenses for non-commercial software are linked to your personal Foundry account under a centralised product "entitlement", and can only be issued by our website. In order to get a license, the non-commercial product needs to communicate with our website to authorise the device; the website then creates a temporary node-locked license for that machine which the non-commercial product then installs. This method of licensing offers you far greater flexibility than ever before. You can run it on multiple devices consecutively, rather than being locked to just one, and you can manage your entitlement allocations from Foundry’s website.

Your entitlement to each non-commercial software product will allow you to activate and run it on up to two devices at any one time. Should you wish to swap this to another device at any point, you can do so by first deactivating the non-commercial software product from one or both of your existing devices, before activating on the third. This can be done from the Help menu of the non-commercial software product.

Our non-commercial software products are not covered by Foundry’s Customer Support team as this service is exclusive to those using commercial products with valid maintenance. However, there are dedicated help areas for Nuke Non-commercial and Mari Non-commercial in Foundry Community. These areas are your central source of help and advice on installation, licensing and any other questions you may have. We’ll be doing our best to cover all possible installation and licensing questions with sticky notes and video content within this forum. Please be aware that the Community is not an officially supported area, so there are no guarantees of a response; however, we will monitor the forum for any serious issues or interesting features requested.

To get Mari Non-commercial, visit the registration page and follow these simple steps:

1. Enter your Foundry log-in details, or sign up for an account if you haven’t already
2. Complete our short form, accept the non-commercial EULA and click to request your non-commercial license entitlement
3. Download the latest build of Mari
4. Install and run Mari Non-commercial while connected to the Internet
5. On first run, you will be prompted to activate your device: select Activate Device and enter your Foundry log-in details
6. Your Mari Non-commercial entitlement has now been activated to run on your device and you can now launch your session

Mari Non-commercial is functionally restricted in the following ways:

• Project files (.mnc) can only be created and shared in Mari Non-commercial, and cannot be loaded into the commercial version of Mari
• Export texture resolution size is limited to a maximum of 4K
• Export texture bit-depth is limited to either 8-bit or 16-bit per channel
• Supported export formats: .exr, .psd, .png, .tga, .jpg, .jpeg
• Unsupported export formats: .tif, .tiff, .hdr, .dds, and .ptx
• Python scripting is disabled
• Limit of six UV texture patches per object, with a maximum face size of 4K, but unlimited channels and layers
• Object count is limited to five objects
• Custom shaders are not supported
• Session Scripts are disabled
• The Nuke<>Mari bridge is disabled
• The use of OCIO files is limited to Nuke's default OCIO file

System requirements for Mari Non-commercial are the same as the equivalent version of commercial Mari. These can be seen on the main system requirements page.

To get Nuke Non-commercial, visit the registration page and follow these simple steps:

1. Enter your Foundry log-in details, or sign up for an account if you haven’t already
2. Complete our short form, accept the non-commercial EULA and click to request your non-commercial license entitlement
3. Download the latest build of Nuke
4. Install and run your choice of Nuke, NukeX or Nuke Studio Non-commercial while connected to the Internet
5. On first run, you will be prompted to activate your device: select Activate Device and enter your Foundry log-in details
6. Your NUKE Non-commercial entitlement has now been activated to run on your device and you can now launch your session

Nuke Non-commercial is functionally restricted in the following ways:

• Output resolution is limited to HD (1920 x 1080).
• Disabled nodes: The WriteGeo node, Primatte node, Ultimatte node and GenerateLUT node are disabled in the Nuke Non-commercial range. Exporting a LUT from the MatchGrade node is also disabled.
• 2D format support is disabled for MPEG4 and h264
• No third-party plug-in support - Only plug-ins that are shipped with Nuke can be used in the non-commercial version. OFX plug-ins and custom plug-ins compiled with the NDK can only be used in the commercial version of NUKE.
• No Monitor output support - There is no video monitor output support in the Nuke Non-commercial range.
• Exporting Nuke Studio Sequences as EDL/XML is disabled.
• Encrypted data storage - All external data storage is encrypted, including Nuke scripts (these are saved with the extension .nknc), gizmos (saved with the extension .gznc), Nuke Studio timeline projects (saved with extension .hroxnc) and copying to the clipboard. Among other things, this means Nuke Non-commercial saves files in an encrypted format, unlike the commercial version, which saves scripts unencrypted as plain text. The commercial Nuke range cannot load files created with Nuke Non-commercial. The Nuke Non-commercial range can, however, load scripts and gizmos created with the commercial version.
• Limited Python scripting - The non-commercial licenses of the Nuke range restrict the amount of nodes that can be retrieved at a time by scripting. Functions such as "nuke.allNodes()" in Python will return only the first 10 nodes available rather than all of them at once, and scripts written to iterate through the node graph will not be able to retrieve any more nodes beyond a set point. The commercial Nuke range can retrieve any and all nodes at any time as the command names would suggest.
• Frame Server slave rendering is disabled.
• Terminal mode is restricted - Running Nuke in terminal mode (-t) is restricted to the use of existing .nknc scripts and Python files.

System requirements for Nuke Non-commercial are the same as the equivalent version of commercial Nuke. These can be seen on the main system requirements page.